Tap Into Colours

Kitchen and bathroom taps come in a wide range of colours - nothing groundbreaking in that statement - and choosing your colour is generally a pretty easy decision, after all we all know what we like. But what's behind these various colours? What makes a chrome tap chrome for instance and what's the difference between pewter, satin nickel and silk steel?

First let's take a quick look at the general engineering process. Manufacturers generally start with solid brass in either bar stock, tube or die cast states. This brass is then manufactured into the various components required to assemble the kitchen or bathroom tap. This is a meticulous process and can require many components in order to build just one tap. Perrin and Rowe, a UK manufacturer of luxury kitchen and bathroom taps, can use up to 32 different components to make just one kitchen tap for instance.

After the manufacturing process is complete, the various tap components are polished by hand to exacting standards to make sure that all the imperfections are removed form the surface of the brass.

Next the "polished brass" components are chemically washed and sent to a plating facility, where a base coat of nickel is added. After this process is complete the kitchen or bathroom taps will be plated in the desired finish and generally these are either polished chrome,  gold or nickel using an electro - static plating process.

Sanitized colour finishes are very popular today as satin like surfaces tend to show up less smudges from soap or cooking oils etc. Satin finishes are created by taking the base colour (usually polished nickel) and literally brushing the surface by hand using an abrasive mop. This process "sanitizes" the colour by leaving tiny micro etches in the surface of the colour. Manufacturers have various names for these finishes, but essentially pewter, satin nickel, silk steel are all the same colour.